Operation of the 1994 Qld Estimates Committees: a Retrospective

AUSTRALASIAN STUDY OF PARLIAMENT GROUP (Queensland Chapter) Operation of the 1994 Qld Estimates Committees: A Retrospective Dr PAUL REYNOLDS Hon WARWICK PARER, Senator Mr ROSS DUNNING (Former Senior Public Servant, Qld Government, and CEO Evans Deakins Industries) 21 NOV 1994 Parliament House Brisbane Reported by Parliamentary Reporting Staff Dr Reynolds: Thank you ladies and gentlemen for your attendance. The Honourable David Hamill is ill and cannot join us. However, he insisted that some of his points should be given to the meeting. I will do that on his behalf. I can begin by observing that Estimates matters have always been vital to the operation of Parliament. The right to tax was central to the crisis in the Constitution in the seventeenth century. The battle between Crown and Parliament which culminated in the Cromwellian Interregnum of 1649 to 1658 was fundamentally about the right to tax and who possessed that right. It was then resolved on the battlefield. The Parliament had the right to tax but upon this the constitutional seal was set in 1688 when, in the Glorious Revolution, William and Mary, as joint monarchs, accepted without let or hindrance Parliament's unchallenged right to tax. It took another 150 years of British parliamentary evolution for this principle to be worked through in all its particulars but, if we take an historical dimension, we can see that the right to tax is the right to govern and the right to govern confers the stamp of legitimacy on Government. It is pertinent for our Constitution that, only once since Federation, namely in 1975, has this principle been called into question. As far as Queensland is concerned, until 1990 the Estimates debates were under the total control of the Executive. Cabinet decided after the Budget was brought down which departments' Estimates were debated. This meant that Parliament's scrutiny of Executive Government was severely curtailed, hampered by the Executive's decision. After 1989 the current Government's policy was that all departments' Estimates would be debated in Committee of the Whole, a situation which prevailed until 1993. The Government then decided that a better scenario would be to break the House into a series of committees to scrutinise all departmental Estimates. I am unsure whether it is correct to observe that this decision was a first for a Lower House in the Australian jurisdiction. My distinct impression is that Estimates Committees have hitherto been the province of Upper Houses. However, right or not, this decision certainly broke new ground in Queensland. As far as I can discern, dividing the Legislative Assembly into Committees to examine the Estimates of line departments had two results. Firstly, it potentially enhanced the parliamentary committee system. This had embryonically been put in place by the Ahern Government—1988 to 1989—when the Parliament finally grappled with the notion of standing and ad hoc committees, clothed in the powers of the Parliament itself, having investigative rights and the power to make recommendations. It is very appropriate that Bill Hewitt is in the audience tonight because no-one was more vocal about this in the Parliaments of the 1970s and the 1980s than the Honourable Bill Hewitt and the Honourable Mike Ahern. Secondly, reading the reports of the Estimates Committees, it was apparent that it was Ministers and their departmental advisers who were subject to detailed scrutiny, not in a general sense, but as the committees' deliberations were being put together and teased out, Opposition and Government members, together with other people present and Hansard full reporting ensured that the Estimates Committees became microcosms of the Parliament as a whole. When reading the Estimates Committees' reports, you see that there is some ambivalence in various Ministerial responses. Some Ministers took the process very seriously; some Ministers, regrettably, did not. Most back bench members took this process seriously and their concerns come out in the committees' reports. This then leads me to paraphrase what David Hamill intended to say. This can be couched under two headings. One was that, as an Opposition frontbencher for much of the 1980s and then as a Government Minister from 1989, under the old system the Estimates were debated in the House and Ministers responded to policy debates. In fact, Estimates debates were about policy because members engaged in wide-angled talk. Therefore, he felt that Ministers did not tend to familiarise themselves with line issues. They spoke for 20 minutes to introduce their Estimates; then they sat in the chair while their Estimates were debated—and often they were debated for eight, nine or ten hours—then they rose to summarise, and that was the end of the matter. Certainly, local members took everybody around their departments, around their constituencies and around every road and bridge that was in place. That was fine, too, but the Minister tended, in the House, to respond in a wide- angled way. Mr Hamill felt that with the present Estimates Committees Ministers had to be much better briefed in detail as committee members were now more inclined to ask very detailed questions, make more detailed observations because they were now sitting in the Estimates Committees not only as private members but as members of the Parliament. Therefore, they were making specific points about things which they were interested in. Ministers now had to be better briefed. But the Honourable David Hamill said that, if there was a danger, it was that the Ministers could kick these concerns to their departmental advisers. They came to the committees in order for the Minister to duck the detailed questions and say, "Fred Nerk will answer that", or "Mary Bloggs knows about that." So the Ministers could stand back from it. Finally, where does it all go from here? One of the weaknesses of the committee system is that the reports are presented, laid on the table and printed, but are not necessarily acted upon. This is where a fundamental problem with the committee system presents itself. Under the Westminster system, there is only one body which has the right to tax, namely the Government. No other constituent part of the Parliament has this right. Committees can report to the Parliament but it is up to the Executive how they handle those reports, especially those which involve the subvention of public money. I have argued long with the PCJC that this is the fundamental flaw in its make-up: That the CJC may report to a backbench members' committee but there is no further line or authority. When I asked the Honourable Mike Ahern why he set it up that way, he said, "Because the National Crime Authority was set up that way." In my opinion, this is a flawed model. Senator Parer was a very honoured member of the Brisbane business community before he became a Liberal Senator for Queensland. He has served on a number of Opposition front bench shadow portfolios. Senator Parer has been a member of several Senate Estimates Committees. The floor is yours. Hon Warwick Parer1: Thank you very much Paul. …. Just for interest and by way of background—the early Senate Estimates Committees were established after a long period of Coalition Governments in Canberra. If my memory serves me correctly, the driving force behind the Estimates process was Alan Missen. Alan Missen was very keen to see this process adopted, because he wanted us to follow the American system of accountability to some degree. So it all developed from there. Curiously enough, in retrospect—and I do not mean to be political when I say this; also, I wasn't there at the time—because the system was set up by backbenchers such as Missen, who was a member of the coalition, according to reports from our Ministers at the time the most direct questions asked during the Estimates process were from the then Government's backbenchers, not from the Opposition. In retrospect, I think the coalition might have wondered, "Why did we let Missen get away with this?" In one or two months' time, I will have served on Estimates Committees for very close to 10 years. When I first went to Canberra, I was told, "You are on an Estimates committee", and I had no idea what an Estimates committee was. I was introduced to the process via a crusty old Labor chairman who was about to retire. The Minister on duty was Peter Walsh, who was guaranteed to put fear and trembling into the hearts and minds of even the toughest politician. The chairman took me aside and asked, "Look, do you know what this is all about?" I said, "Not really." He said, "My job is to finish this Estimates committee as fast as possible. Your job is to bring down the Government." Perhaps I am being a little cynical. However, as time progressed, I realised that what he said wasn't entirely incorrect. Later, I might discuss some of the things that we pursue in Estimates and our reasons for doing so. Curiously, this year the whole Senate Estimates committee system has changed substantially. The Government's decision to bring down the Budget in May rather than in September resulted in a total rearrangement of the Estimates process. In previous years, the major round of Estimates hearings occurred in October, after the Budget. At that round we had the Budget, the Estimates and also the annual reports for the previous year, so we could weigh up what was coming forward in the next year by comparing it with past years' results. In March, there used to be a round of hearings that covered additional appropriations.

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